Rapidly measuring spatial accessibility of COVID-19 healthcare resources: a case study of Illinois, USA
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International Journal of Health Geographics Open Access
RESEARCH
Rapidly measuring spatial accessibility of COVID‑19 healthcare resources: a case study of Illinois, USA Jeon‑Young Kang1,2, Alexander Michels1,3, Fangzheng Lyu1,2, Shaohua Wang1,2, Nelson Agbodo4, Vincent L. Freeman5 and Shaowen Wang1,2,3*
Abstract Background: The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), causing the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, has infected millions of people and caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. While COVID-19 has overwhelmed healthcare resources (e.g., healthcare personnel, testing resources, hospital beds, and ventilators) in a number of countries, limited research has been conducted to understand spatial accessibility of such resources. This study fills this gap by rapidly measuring the spatial accessibility of COVID-19 healthcare resources with a particular focus on Illinois, USA. Method: The rapid measurement is achieved by resolving computational intensity of an enhanced two-step floating catchment area (E2SFCA) method through a parallel computing strategy based on cyberGIS (cyber geographic infor‑ mation science and systems). The E2SFCA has two major steps. First, it calculates a bed-to-population ratio for each hospital location. Second, it sums these ratios for residential locations where hospital locations overlap. Results: The comparison of the spatial accessibility measures for COVID-19 patients to those of population at risk identifies which geographic areas need additional healthcare resources to improve access. The results also help delin‑ eate the areas that may face a COVID-19-induced shortage of healthcare resources. The Chicagoland, particularly the southern Chicago, shows an additional need for resources. This study also identified vulnerable population residing in the areas with low spatial accessibility in Chicago. Conclusion: Rapidly measuring spatial accessibility of healthcare resources provides an improved understanding of how well the healthcare infrastructure is equipped to save people’s lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings are relevant for policymakers and public health practitioners to allocate existing healthcare resources or distribute new resources for maximum access to health services. Keywords: COVID-19, CyberGIS, Social vulnerability, Spatial accessibility, Spatial analysis Introduction A novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARSCoV-2), has widely spread worldwide. As of April 10, *Correspondence: [email protected] 1 CyberGIS Center for Advanced Digital and Spatial Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
2020, about 1.6 million COVID-19 cases have been confirmed in the world; and in the United States alone, over 475,000 people have been infected with more than 17,000 deaths. Among the infected cases, hundreds of thousands of people are hospitalized. The COVID-19 pandemic ha
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